


on loose ends and promises

by paperlesscrown



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon Related, Childhood Friends, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Music, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 14:17:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20676785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperlesscrown/pseuds/paperlesscrown
Summary: Jughead makes a promise - that he'd tell Betty what he thought of her,truly,when they're both sixteen.But then she leaves. And he's left with nothing but postcards and the words he wishes to utter.





	on loose ends and promises

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of my [songfic series on Tumblr](https://paperlesscrown.tumblr.com/post/187740612638/30-day-songfic-challenge-hello-lovely-people-you), and was supposed to only be a brief drabble. But, as is often the case with Bughead, I got carried away. 
> 
> This plays loosely around several elements of Riverdale: the messiness of the Coopers, Lodge Industries, and Jughead and Betty's childhood friendship, which I've always been curious about. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

“This is weird.”

“Well, _ I’m _weird. Come on. Hit me with it.”

Betty took a deep breath. “Okay. What do you think... of me?”

Jughead looked stumped. “What do you mean, what do I _ think _of you?”

“Jughead! You know what I mean. Like, as a girl.” She fidgeted with her sleeve, flush with adolescent embarrassment. “I can’t ask Archie these things.”

He looked at her. A thousand things streamed through his mind at once. How his mental definition of ‘pretty’ always brought up an image of her. How he liked the smell of her hair. How she clasped his hand tightly when they went through the haunted house at the local carnival. 

But of course, he couldn’t tell her any of these things. Desperately, he tried to stall her.

“Um… tell you what,” he said, flicking out the pocket knife his father had given him for Christmas. She looked at him curiously as he started scratching out numbers on the floor of the treehouse - her birthday, but at a future date. “I’ll tell you when we’re both sixteen.”

“Sixteen!” she squealed. “Juggy, we’re only twelve! That’s four years away!”

“Well, you’ll just have to be patient, then,” he said, laughing.

“And you promise you’ll be honest?”

“I’m always honest with you, Betty.”

_ Except now, _ he thought. He realised later on that he wasn’t so much dishonest as he was _ stumped. _Because how do you fit all of Betty Cooper into a bunch of paltry words?

“Okay,” she said, breathlessly excited. “Sixteen.”

* * *

But when Betty turned thirteen, the Coopers unexpectedly left Riverdale.

It was maddeningly swift: one minute she was there, the next, she was standing in the driveway, clutching her beloved book bag as her parents packed the car.

Jughead dismounted his bike. “Betty, what the hell’s going on?”

“Dad wants us to leave,” she said, sniffling. “He’s not making any sense, Jug. He says we need to get away from here. He says… he says Riverdale’s not innocent anymore.”

Jughead felt a dark pit open up in his stomach. Hal’s words sounded ominous, but more frightening for him was the prospect of her leaving. Riverdale without Betty? How the _ hell _does that even make sense?

“Does Archie know?” A dumb question. But he had no other words.

“Yeah. We’ve said goodbye.”

Panic engulfed him. Behind her, he could see Hal getting into the driver’s seat. Alice looked grim as she packed the last of their belongings into the boot. Polly was bawling on the phone. _ Probably talking to Jason, _he thought.

“Jug?”

He snapped out of his daze. _ Focus, damn it. _What could he say? He wasn’t prepared for this. He wished he had time to write something out. He’ll just have to wing it.

“Look, Betty, I--”

But he was startled out of his speech when she jumped into his arms, hugging him. “I’m really going to miss you, Juggy.”

And he couldn’t help it, because she was holding him so tightly, but all of a sudden his lips were crushed into her hair, and he wanted to cry but he was also painfully aware of the moment - that this could be the last time he saw her. The speech he’d prepared in his head seemed awkward now, but he had to say something. Anything.

So he said the only thing he could, between being choked up and wanting to tell her that she meant the world to him.

“I’m going to miss you too, Betty.” 

* * *

Years passed. The Cooper house went up for sale. Rumours ran rife through the town: Hal was mentally unstable. Alice had joined a cult. Polly was pregnant with Jason’s twins, and Clifford and Penelope had paid them an exorbitant amount to leave and keep the heirs to their maple fortune safe. 

No-one knew whether these rumours were true. Perhaps they were, but Jughead didn’t care. On his birthdays, he’d receive a postcard from some random town, with a simple message and Betty’s name signed, with a heart, in her telltale cursive. He kept those in a box under his bed. 

There was never any return address on them, so he could never send her a card in return. So on _ her _birthdays, he would visit the treehouse, flick out his knife and carve her birthday deeper into the wood. 

Afterwards, he’d stare out the window into the stars, wonder where she was, and whisper a quick wish into the night.

“Happy birthday, Betty.”

* * *

Jughead turned sixteen with little fanfare. Archie gave him a comic. Reggie pulled his punches. His mother stopped by Riverdale, with his sister in tow and a cake that he wished was more celebratory than apologetic. His father made an effort not to drink.

It didn’t matter: he had a postcard on the way. He’d pinned up a map in his room, to try and track where Betty had been. Fort Lauderdale. Roanoke. Portland. DC. He couldn’t wait to see where his next sticker was going up.

But then… nothing.

At first he thought that there could have been some sort of delay. It took him a week of checking the mailbox to finally realise that he wasn’t going to get it. It terrified him. Was Betty okay? Did she still remember him?

Those two questions whirled around in his mind in the weeks that followed. He thought that if he was forced to choose between those two things - her safety, his oblivion - he’d pick her safety. Any day.

_ Forget me, _ he muttered into the night air. _ Be safe. Be safe. Be safe. _

* * *

Jughead clenched his pocket knife between his teeth, climbing up the ladder one rung at a time. The treehouse was coming down in a matter of days. Lodge Industries had acquired the property it was on, and the tree was being lopped down as part of its development. 

But not on his watch. He had already gone ahead and set up his sleeping bag and some rudimentary supplies inside. Surely there was no way they were going to chop it down with a sixteen-year-old boy inside. His plan was simple: sneak in during the night, and stall work in the morning, and as long as he could. 

And anyway, today was Betty’s birthday. Her sixteenth. He had a date to carve into the wood.

When he got to the top, he was on the verge of hauling himself up when he peered into the dark and nearly fell right off. A figure stirred in his sleeping bag. Jughead spat his knife out and gripped it with a free hand. 

_ Just jump them, _ he thought, panicking. _ 1, 2, 3-- _

“Juggy?”

He froze. His knife dropped on the floor.

The figure turned around. 

“_ Betty _?” 

She sat up. Her face, her body had changed, unquestionably. But it was still _ her _. Somehow, she had the same voice - her childhood nickname for him carrying the same rhythm and cadence, though weighted down with more gravity. 

And her eyes, too. They remained green as a forest, but a forest with an intimate memory of the dark, a longing for light.

“I… I had to leave them,” she said, unprovoked, her steady facade crumbling. “I had to come back.”

He scrambled up and into the treehouse, full of questions but overwhelmed by relief at the sight of her. Slowly, he crawled towards her in the small space - they were both too tall for it now - and stopped right in front of her. There was a bruise on her cheek. Rage pooled in his stomach, then softened when she crawled towards him, too.

When he finally pulled her into an embrace, it felt like water. Like drowning, like drinking. Too much. Too little. She began to cry.

“Hey, hey,” he whispered soothingly into her hair. “You’re safe now.”

“I’m a mess,” she sobbed. “I’m fucked up, Jug.”

_ No, no, no. _What had happened to her? Where was her family now? How did she get back? 

He realised that he didn’t care. At least for now. She was _ here, _alive and in his arms. It was her sixteenth birthday. He’d held onto a promise for four years. 

Who knew what tomorrow would bring? He wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

_ What do you think of me, Juggy? _

“You’re… you’re none of those things, Betty,” he said, his voice catching on a hitch in his throat. On truth. He swallowed, and tilted her chin up. To make sure that she knew. That she _ really _knew. 

“You’re brave,” he said, “and breathtaking, and beautiful.”


End file.
